Rodney and Radek Are Friends
by Almedha
Summary: Just random bits featuring Rodney and Radek. (I'm not sure if the title is sarcasm or what.) I may add more. Each chapter is more or less self-contained. R&R? My first Atlantis fanfic.
1. So You're Going to Help Me?

_Just wrote a little bit based on the title of a song I was listening to. For some reason. I may do more. Takes place during_ Hide and Seek. _Critiques and comments are loved. This is my first Atlantis fic, so any thoughts on the characters or any details I get wrong, I'd be happy to hear about it._

* * *

 **"So You're Going to Help Me?"**

"Well, it's impossible to know for sure, now, isn't it?" Rodney snapped irritably. He didn't even know who this guy was. Stupid. Of course, Rodney couldn't call him that. He'd share the name with about a half a dozen other people and Rodney hadn't even met everyone yet.

"Yes. It would be nice to have the ATA gene."

It didn't matter. Rodney was never going to remember his name anyway. He could at least identify the flag of the Czech Republic on his shoulder. Rodney didn't have any other Czech scientists. Maybe he did. He didn't remember.

"We could know for sure," he continued.

"Oh, so I guess you'd go around activating every shiny thing that caught your eye, hm?" Rodney challenged.

The Czech frowned, his eyebrows twisted. "No. This is practically an instruction manual for the device. It clearly says—"

"I know what it says." Rodney tipped the tablet toward him.

"Did you read it?" he asked.

Rodney scoffed. The gall. "Yes."

"Okay. You know what it is."

"We _think_ we know what it is." Never forget, this city tried to kill them when they first arrived. Rodney wasn't quite ready to trust to Ancients yet. Of course, they were ten-thousand years past some of this stuffs' use-by date.

He shook his head and walked to another part of the lab. Picked up another shiny piece of Ancient technology. "Why would they lie?"

"I'm not saying they would lie. Maybe you misidentified it," Rodney said. True, it was Rodney and Grodin who'd found the object. This guy happened to stumble upon a picture remarkably similar to it before they did.

He paused, looking into the space before his eyes for a moment. "Right. I misidentified a green and silver irregular hexagon with a—"

Rodney put a finger up to halt his pratting when Doctor Beckett spoke in his earpiece. "Rodney?"

"Yes, Doctor Beckett." He grinned. This could only mean one thing. "Are you ready for me?"

"I suppose, but—"

"Great! See you in a few minutes." He nodded at—who was he? "Thanks for your help, um…?"

"Zelenka, Doctor Radek Zelenka." He sounded slightly irritated. Maybe Rodney had actually met him before? Usually people reserved this tone for repeating unnecessary information that others were inexplicably expected to remember.

"Right. Later."

#

"Hey. You."

Radek looked up from his seat in the puddle jumper. He sighed. So much for leaving the lab to get away from this— "Yes, Doctor McKay?"

"Back me up on this."

He recognized one of the military members of the expedition behind him, but Radek typically made it a point not to get friendly with those types. Even though his nod of greeting seemed… well, not murderous, anyway.

"Back you up?" Radek repeated. English was still hard if he didn't stop to think about it. He spied the device he'd identified earlier attached to Doctor McKay's shirt. "I see the gene therapy worked…"

"Yes, this thing makes the wearer invulnerable," Doctor McKay said.

He knew that. He shrugged and went back to the puddle jumper systems he was working on. Well, not working on. Studying. It was too early to begin fooling around with these things too much. Maybe he should say that out loud? "It's like a shield," Radek allowed.

"Invulnerable, Sheppard," McKay said to his friend.

"Yeah, okay," Sheppard said sarcastically. Then he looked at Radek. "Doctor Zelenka said it was 'like a shield,' not that it makes you invulnerable."

"It's like the puddle jumper shields," Radek spoke up, "but skin-tight. It should absorb all—"

"Right, right," McKay interrupted. "It basically absorbs, um…" He paused. Probably trying to find the words his friend would understand. "Kinetic energy. For example, if I fell off the puddle jumper right now, I wouldn't feel a thing."

"It should also block projectiles—"

"Projectiles?" Sheppard asked.

Radek decided to go back to his puddle jumper. It didn't interrupt him when he spoke.

"Yes!" McKay said. "Here, shoot me." He held his arms up.

Radek glanced up. This would be worth watching even if he was admittedly gun-shy. Even if he couldn't get a word in edgewise. Still… "This isn't your first test?" he asked.

McKay looked at Radek. "Well. Yes. But you read the manual, too. It was very clear."

"Yes." Radek nodded his agreement. It was pretty clear. Including the picture of the device that Doctor McKay was now wearing. "It's ten thousand years old."

"I'll just shoot you in the leg." Even Radek thought Sheppard sounded a little eager.

"Great."

That had to be the most pleased anyone ever was about being shot at. Doctor McKay must have been pretty assured that this device worked the way the Ancients said it did. Of course, if it did work that way…

"Ah." Radek held his hand up just as Sheppard pulled out his handgun. Both of them looked at him. "Outside, please?" he asked.

Doctor McKay snapped and pointed at him. "Right. What if it ricochets?"

Radek nodded, but both of them were already on their way out into the jumper bay.

Sheppard paused at the doorway. "Care to join us?" He paused. "You work for him, right?"

Radek nodded. Sort of.

"Front-row seats to McKay getting shot at."

"Ah, no." Radek chuckled. He looked back at his tablet and then out the window. As much as he appreciated the appeal… he could see just fine in here.

McKay took up a position in the middle of the jumper bay. Sheppard stood about three meters away with his handgun pointed at the floor.

"Are you sure about this?" Sheppard asked.

"Come on." Doctor McKay rolled his eyes.

"Alright."

A round snapped off and the shield around McKay's leg glowed and buzzed. McKay flinched, but as soon as he realized that the bullet had deflected harmlessly off his personal shield, he grinned at Sheppard.

"Invulnerable!" he shouted.

"Now, this could be useful," Sheppard said.

Radek disconnected his tablet and left the jumper, convinced that they were done shooting and being shot at. He pulled up the text on the Ancient personal shield and skimmed. "Useful," he mumbled. Yes, useful if almost anyone but Doctor McKay had worn it first. "Except that the shield im—"

"What should we do next?" Doctor McKay asked.

Radek frowned.

"Toss you off the balcony in the control room?" Sheppard asked. He looked at Radek. "You sure you don't want to come?"

Radek sighed and looked at the puddle jumper. This was why he wanted to work with technology in the first place, wasn't it? "No. I'll stay and…" He gestured vaguely at the jumper, not bothering to finish his sentence. He couldn't have translated it quickly enough for these impatient children, anyway.

"Alright, let's go." Sheppard jogged out of the jumper bay. Anyone might be so eager to toss McKay off a balcony.

"Right." McKay was about the follow, then turned to Radek. "Thanks, uh…"

"Zelenka," he offered.

"Yes." McKay ran out of the jumper bay after Sheppard.

#

"Are you going to eat that?" Rodney motioned to the untouched sandwich on the plate. It was irresponsible to have food just sitting out in the lab anyway. The only other person in the lab was the Czech whose name he could never remember. Sure, he'd just walked in and set it down a moment ago. But if he wasn't eating it right now, he wasn't exactly starving, now, was he?

"Um." He looked at it, then at Rodney. He finally shrugged. "No."

"Finish whatever you were doing with the… uh…?" Rodney chewed on the sandwich pensively. He couldn't even remember where he'd seen him last.

"The puddle jumper?" he filled in. He sighed. "No. Making sure that energy-cloud didn't cause any damage before it went through the 'gate." He looked at Rodney, and then his eyes fell on the spent Ancient personal shield.

Rodney went back to his computer, lines upon lines of text on the personal shield. He was going to need another sandwich. He could translate it, if given time. Lots of time. But he was starting to recognize some words by sight, which was a good sign.

"You're reading that _now_?"

Rodney glanced at him. "I've already read it."

"Right." He nodded, but looked less than convinced.

Rodney closed the instruction manual and spun around to face him. "I knew exactly what I was doing."

"Yes."

Did he mean he agreed, or was his English not very good? Rodney pondered that and the sandwich.

He suddenly stood up and shut off his computer. "I am going to eat. But let me know next time you need someone to read an instruction manual."

Rodney spied a long, laborious text on puddle jumpers on the tablet under his arm with hand-drawn diagrams and schematics labeled in a language Rodney didn't know. Probably from earth. "I can read instruction manuals," Rodney called after him.

He said something in Czech, waving him off.

Rodney still couldn't remember his name.


	2. Prelude

_Pre-_ Thirty Eight Minutes _. I always wondered what exactly made Rodney pick Zelenka out of a crowd of blue-shirts especially in a room occupied by the likes of Kavanagh and Grodin. Probably not this. But I gave it my best shot._

* * *

 **Prelude**

What did he have to do for some competency around here?

"Yes, I guess that would work perfectly if you wanted to kill the jumper pilot." Rodney turned on Kavanagh with a disdainful glare that even he couldn't miss.

Kavanagh laughed derisively, but looked back at his tablet. That would keep him out of the conversation for at least the next few minutes. That would give Rodney time to think. Not that this was urgent. It wasn't. But it could become urgent. Better to work on it while they were all in the same room.

Or maybe not. Rodney could feel the average IQ in the conference room dropping as people arrived.

Rodney looked around the room. Heading an entire department of scientists, while it came with his level of intelligence, was not something he was practiced at. He almost missed his little room all to himself at Area 51.

There were dimwits everywhere, perhaps especially at Area 51. At least in the Pegasus Galaxy there was an abnormally high number of abnormally accomplished people. That didn't mean they were smart, though. It just meant they got things done.

He couldn't ignore it anymore. The two scientists—one of them Czech and the other French who was apparently trilingual at least—had been talking between themselves in a language no one else knew. Moreau and… what was that guy's name? Was he ever going to remember it?

"Something you'd like to share with the class, Moreau?" he asked.

Moreau looked up, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights.

The one whose name escaped him spoke up. "I've been working on mapping the control pathways in puddle jumper two," he said. He took another moment to converse Moreau.

"Single pathways are difficult to isolate," Moreau finished, apparently translating.

"That's it?"

"Our understanding of the puddle jumper's systems is still limited," the other one said. "It's trial and error. And the redundancy is… well, irritating?" He checked with Moreau, again, in Czech. It was getting annoying. "Yes."

"Well, I'd hate to be the one trapped out in space with a malfunctioning jumper," McKay said. It should have worked, right? There was access to almost every single system in the puddle jumper—or maybe every last one, he didn't know—from the rear compartment. On the other hand, as he recently learned quite well, Ancient technology had a mental component.

If they could bypass that by using control crystals, what would be the point?

"Trapped out in space in the rear compartment with no pilot?" Grodin asked. He sounded skeptical.

"The city tried to drown us when we first got here." McKay thought he needed no further explanation and moved along. "Alright, well, Moreau and friends actually came prepared. Can you translate that for the rest of us?" Rodney indicated the Czech schematic.

The two of them looked at each other. Between them, it might just take all their English skills. The one not-Moreau seemed to be better at English, though. Give Moreau a break, though, he was translating between his secondary and tertiary languages.

That meant that this work on the control pathways was mostly the Czech's.

Everyone looked at each other.

"Well?" Rodney asked them all.

Everyone immediately went to look. Rodney sighed.

#

What did he have to do for some respect around here?

At least he wasn't generally hated. Generally ignored was better than being Kavanagh. But then sometimes Kavanagh had some good points. If it came down to it, Radek decided that he would stand by his opinions if it meant he would be hated. Of course, he never had it any other way. It was what got him here.

Here. What was so good about here? It was an exciting opportunity, one he couldn't turn down.

Radek sighed heavily and leaned over the schematic. "Decompression." That was the right word, wasn't it?

Moreau offered a diagram in English for Radek to check.

"Not now," Radek said in Czech.

"Are you going to wait for Doctor McKay to start yelling again?" he asked.

Radek chuckled. "Let him." He was smart, but he was abrasive and arrogant. Radek was sure he still had no idea what his name was even though Radek had introduced himself no less than five times. "If he's yelling, it means he needs us to do something."

"Or telling us to get out of the way."

Radek understood that sentiment, too. "Please, stop talking."

Moreau fell silent and gave his diagram to Grodin. They talked about it in hushed tones before turning to talk to other scientists. Let them talk. It seemed like what most of them were best at. A few of them were more interested in doing things. Talk about it later.

Or not. That would be better.

Radek gathered his tablet and assorted wires and tried to duck out of the conference room unobtrusively. There was one good thing about being Doctor Zelenka. No one seemed to notice he'd left.

Radek made it to the jumper bay with little interference. It was a guaranteed quiet spot. He considered that inexplicable. Why hadn't every scientist on Atlantis rushed the bay as soon as the alien flying contraptions had been discovered? Of course, everyone thought they were _interesting_. Everybody agreed they _merited further investigation_.

Radek was the only one who'd adopted them. He thought about bringing a pillow and setting up residence in Jumper 2 for the foreseeable future.

"Hello, darling," he said to the jumper in his native tongue. Machines didn't need translation.

It was a waste of time to translate everything for everyone else, especially since he wasn't even sure they'd gotten it right. He spent most of his time in here rechecking everything he thought he knew, only for half of it to turn out wrong.

Doctor McKay was right about one thing, though. With the increasing amount they were using these puddle jumpers, it was only a matter of time before things went catastrophically wrong.

Radek would be prepared.


End file.
